by White, Gwynn
“Yes, please. File the messages for my review then delete the originals.”
“Are you sure you want to delete?”
He glanced at Leta. She was smiling.
“Wait a moment. Are all of those messages from the university?”
“Please clarify.”
“Are all of those group messages?”
“You have eight thousand two hundred and forty-two group messages.”
“Okay,” he said. “Delete those. What about the other five?”
“You have four messages from the provost.”
“Delete.”
“You have one message from Professor Conrad Labrecque.”
Abby leaned forward. “Play that message.”
23
An image projected from the data point, eye level above the desk. The man in the image had blond, shoulder-length hair, a dark tan, and sat in the chair Abby occupied now. Abby couldn’t help smiling at his old friend, the Brit that had come into his lectures, his face always buried in a book, his questions always intriguing. At a time in his university career when he would’ve rather spent one hundred percent of his time doing excavation and research, Conrad was one of the few students who made the required teaching component tolerable.
“Hi, Abby,” Conrad said. Abby was taken by the personalized nature of the message, though maybe not as much as Leta. Upon hearing the image’s direct address, she stiffened. Abby placed a calming hand on the desk in front of her.
The projected Conrad raised his brows in a playful way. “I bet you’re sitting at my desk. Nice. Did you find the scotch I put aside for you in the lower?” He smiled widely. “What am I saying, of course you did. Cheers. Don’t drink that all at once. That’s the real deal, two hundred years old, a very hard-to-get red label. You know, I thought I liked scotch until I drank it with you. I remember after that dig in Bohemia, we went to that absinthe bar in the Prague old city. Remember? Three levels down, twelfth century? Just like the Low, no daylight. The music was so loud. We were there for three days. Remember that?” Conrad briefly hung his head then quickly regained his composure. “How is your bar, by the way? Sorry I’ve not come around. Been busy. My notebook is in with the scotch. I think you’ll want to have a look.” Conrad’s face lost expression. “I may have gotten myself into a bit of a scrape. If you’re watching me, I did. I’m probably dead because I’m on my way to find you, and if I haven’t, then well, you found this first.” Conrad sighed and looked down from the camera. Abby recognized the contemplation. Then Conrad’s message resumed. “Listen, the Jasper Stone isn’t what you think it is, and the people after it aren’t who you think they are.” There was a knock at the door behind Conrad. “One minute,” he said in a raised voice toward the door, then again faced the camera. “Students, what can I say? Listen, read my notebook, watch out for that blood symbol, and if you see it”—his eyes went stern—“run.”
The image above the desk disappeared.
The two were silent. Leta was the first to speak. “He said he was going to find you.”
Abby nodded. “Yeah, and he also said that if he didn’t, that meant he was dead.”
“How did he know you would come here? He couldn’t have known that Director Lin was going to bring you in.”
“No, but after hearing what Winslow had to say, I’m beginning to think Yun collected me by request. Conrad must’ve suspected that would happen.” Abby dropped the notebook into his jacket, clutched the scotch mid-bottle, then slid the chair back from the desk. “Listen,” he said as he rose, “I haven’t really slept. Why don’t we review the feeds Winslow gave us this morning and go from there?”
Leta pursed her lips then shrugged. “Okay.”
She leaned forward to gather the papers together into the folder then followed Abby toward the door. When he reached for the latch, she placed her hand on his. “Can I ask you something?”
He glanced at her hand, then peered into the shiny black orbs of her eyes. He shrugged. “Sure.”
“Do you really think we’re going to find anything?”
“Do you really think we’re supposed to?”
Leta lifted her hand from his but kept her gaze locked, either contemplating him or his answer or both. Abby wasn’t sure. From the back of his throat down into his gut, he felt a tinge. He didn’t regret what he’d said. He believed that there was a good a chance they were tasked to fail. The Bureau’s agenda was never transparent. The implication that hadn’t been as clear to him was that this hadn’t occurred to Leta. He was used to the duplicity of the Bureau; that was the framework on which the organization was built. She was part of a new age, and fighting the good fight most likely meant something else to her. After spending the day with her, he was realizing that—at least in her mind—babysitting an old agent had to have been some type of demerit.
“Hey,” he said. “I was just making a crack. I’m gonna call a friend of mine on the way home. We’ll go over the stuff in the morning with the feeds. We’ll get to the bottom of this.”
Whether he’d projected what was going through her mind or had understood what the young Umbra was feeling, he was still not sure. Either way, her expression shifted to a tight-lipped smile and a nod of agreement.
Satisfied they could go on, Abby pressed down on the latch to open the office door. The latch didn’t budge. The bolt was in place. He sighed and reached into his pocket for his university fob, then with the device in his palm, pressed the latch again.
The handle still didn’t budge.
Again, he applied pressure, then again. He ran the fob around the lock, listening for a click.
No sound, no metal on metal, nothing.
He slid the hand holding the fob into his front pocket, straightened his back, and tilted his head to the side. “Something’s not right,” he said. A muscle behind his eyes tensed as he began to shift spectrum. “I can’t seem to find a weakness in the door. How about you?”
“By the window,” Leta said.
With a twist of his neck, Abby saw the purple cloud of odorless gas rapidly forming from across the room.
24
Abby put the bottle of scotch into the deep pocket of his jacket, drew his blade, then threw his other arm up to protect his eyes from the door’s upper glass. “Stand back,” he said. The blade swung forward with a hum then sang a loud pitch, thwacking solidly against the frosted glass pane. The bone in his forearm vibrated from the repelled force of the blow.
He cried out and grabbed his forearm.
The purple cloud continued to billow into the room.
“I don’t think that’s glass,” Leta said.
“You think?” He took three steps back and held the blade up as a phase pistol. Two pulses rapidly released.
The doorway absorbed them.
“The university is a Homeland government building,” Leta said.
“Yeah, I know. So?”
“A Homeland government building with terrorist protection systems.”
What she said registered. The office reinforcements had been enabled. Since there had been no sirens, lights, or vocal warnings, he assumed it was an override of the main system. Certainly, his blade should’ve triggered an alarm. If they’d been at the desk a short time more, the gas would’ve overtaken them. Without shifting, he and Leta may not have seen the silent threat of the cloud creeping upon them. In the part of the spectrum he was now in, the gas was a rich, deep purple and closing fast. He had no way of knowing the gas’ design, but in seconds the room would be full, and surely, they would be incapacitated or dead.
There was no escape from the office.
His mind raced.
“The edge,” he said. “We have to go to the edge.”
Leta nodded. “But what about you?”
“Don’t worry about me,” he said.
She could shift by will. Fortunately, due to his prostheses, he could shift spectrum away from the gas in the same way as he often did to escape the rancid mist and fog of
the Low. Unfortunately, since the gas was still resident in this part of the spectrum, he would have to shift much further.
A deep breath filled his lungs as he continued to shift. The surfaces of the office furniture melted around him as self-induced doses of DMT and the quantum nanos fed and altered his brain. Dark corners grew brighter then dimmed again. Lines blurred. Leta’s face morphed then reconstituted. Still the gas persisted, squeezing them toward the wall.
There wasn’t much further Abby could go. The spectrum only went so far, and that was the edge of the plane. They both nearly fell when the gaping jaws of the huge bolt eel shot from the wall between them. The glowing electric blue ribbon paid no attention to them. Rather, the creature shot forward into the cloud, snaking its long thin body behind. They watched the creature spasm, go limp, then surreally, with its head in the cloud and the tail still within the wall, the glowing blue eel dropped down and through the floor.
The cloud was indeed deadly, and now inches away. They had moments to live.
The two locked eyes on each other.
“The gas is at every range of the plane,” Leta said. She was calm. “No matter how far we shift, we’ll die. The gas will dissipate. The door will unlock, and there will be no trace of how we were murdered.”
Abby was pleased she was calm. He was as well, calmer than he’d been when he thought there were options. Then again, the endorphins rushing through his system were at a level he didn’t remember ever having. He was euphoric. A wave of sensation crushed his spine and a shudder ran into the base of his skull. It was like no other rush he’d ever felt before.
The pillow-thick billow of the purple cloud was about to rub his cheek. If he pressed any harder into the composite wall, he felt he would push right through, just as the bolt had.
He peered deeper into Leta’s dark eyes, then he saw a tear.
Maybe she wasn’t calm.
She was young. She should live.
In an instant, he decided what to do.
He slid his arm up toward her, his hand open, his fingers wide. He gestured with his eyes toward his hand for her to take his. She glanced down then lifted her hand to clasp his. Inhaling a deep exaggerated breath, he encouraged her to do the same. She did.
In the instant before the cloud enveloped them, Abby flung himself around Leta and pulled her into a tight embrace.
25
Every one of Abby’s muscles, ankles to his eyelids, were clenched tight. Seconds passed, but he didn’t die. The warmth of the poisonous cloud had touched his skin and was now gone. Replaced by what, he wasn’t sure. A rush of air surrounded him. Without letting himself breathe, he let his eyes ease open. Leta was in his arms, or at least her translucent form was. Her flesh was gone and her muscle tissue glowed a bright fiery red. The tissue faded—no, dissolved, fell away, leaving iridescent webbing, miles of tiny veins, arteries, her nervous system, her heart, her brain, the dark orbs of her eyes. He thought she was dead, that the gas had done this to her, then realized that the same thing was happening to him, because he could see his own arms, or what was left of them, through her torso, another webbing of a million tiny vessels and nerves outlined in a swarm of fuchsia and pink particles, both of them fading into glowing vapor.
The nanos.
Abby’s entire body, or where his body would’ve been, flooded with elation. He wanted to laugh, to cry; he felt everything. There was a humming all around him, a sweet music, a pulsation. Snapshots sped through his mind in a flickering film, each flying by almost too quickly to comprehend: his mother, a sister, a brother, his father Orin, and the ballerina. Pictures of people he loved, had loved.
A rush of cool air from below drew Abby’s attention to his surroundings. He didn’t know whether he had eyes or not, but he could see.
The purple cloud hadn’t engulfed them. They weren’t even in Conrad’s office, nor were they MidHi in the university ziggurat. He wasn’t even sure they were still in the Homeland. They appeared to be moving—falling, through a swirl of fuchsia and tangerine-cream plasma. The acids of his stomach churned. If this was the plasma of the void, he’d made a grand mistake. He squeezed Leta tighter. The thought swept through him that he’d traded a certain death, for both him and this poor woman, for an eternity floating between planes.
Then, as if to reassure him, the creamy plasma faded to the night sky of a plane where brilliant stars pierced the heavens and a grand golden moon hung robust and low. The sky went on forever, the clouds puffy pillows below. The wind, brisk, clean, and howling hard. He allowed himself to take a large breath into formless lungs. With the breath, another euphoric shudder, except, he realized abruptly that the current rushing past was because they were falling. The university office was in a MidHi tower far above the floor of this plane. Below them, he saw a city of small structures drawing near. He indexed what he saw to discover where they were.
Another quiver rushed through him. He squeezed Leta tighter, pulling her into him.
The nightscape faded and the creamy plasma swirl returned.
And then, with a slam, they rolled hard onto a floor and tumbled into a wall.
Neither moved at first, then they propped themselves up.
Abby was sure that whatever was in his stomach was about to evacuate.
Leta must’ve felt the same because her movements were slow. She tried to pick herself up then abandoned the attempt. Abby recognized the expression on her face, a mix of disbelief and accusation.
“You can’t do that,” she said softly. “No one can do that.”
“I know,” said Abby. “You can’t tell anyone, even Director Lin. You’ll be in great danger.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Sealed records, remember? It’s a secret too dangerous to let out. You can’t let the Bureau find out that you know.” A half-truth, but one he was comfortable with. If she told anyone, they would both be in jeopardy.
“If it’s so secret, why did you do it?”
“I had to or we’d be…”
Leta leaned back on her hands then nodded. “Right.”
She paused for a moment. But he could tell she wasn’t dwelling, and for that, he was thankful. She was an agent. Fortitude, tenacity, and resilience were still prerequisite to being admitted to the Bureau. She was in the present and moving on. She leaned forward and brushed the dirt of the floor from her hands. “Where are we?”
“A lower floor. We blinked out then…” Abby shook his head side to side.
“We’re lucky we didn’t end up in the ceiling. Have you ever tried that move before?”
“That was the first time I tried jumping at all.”
“The first time?” Leta’s neck crooked forward. “You could’ve killed us.”
“Well, given the alternative…”
“Did it ever occur to you that there was another possible outcome?”
“Down to the statistical count?”
“What?”
“That’s why I never tried it before. I’m not even sure I meant to do that.”
“What do you mean? You didn’t do that on purpose?”
“Yes and no. With the pressure of being gassed to death and all, I did the math and acted.”
“I don’t understand,” Leta said. “What do you mean, you ‘did the math?’”
“Doesn’t matter, what does matter is that someone just tried to kill two special agents.”
“Yes.” Leta stood up. A light flicked on in an adjoining room. “I think we’re in someone’s home.” A glowing blue baton poked into the room followed by a skinny man in silk pajamas. Abby and Leta had already shifted out of view.
26
Abby tugged the brim of his fedora forward.
“Would you mind walking in front of me?” he asked.
“Who are you hiding from?” asked Leta.
“My bar. It’s right around the corner. The scrubbers just cleared the view from the window and I don’t want to be seen.”
“Abby’s,”
she said, referencing the neon sign that protruded from the corner. “You really mean your bar?”
“Yeah. I’ve had the place for a few years. The first of many bad investments.” He was half joking. Though the business never generated much revenue, the payback came in other ways.
“Couldn’t we have gone a different way?” she asked.
“I like to peek in, just don’t want to be seen.”
When the amber lamp above the intersection fell on them, he settled into pace next to Leta. Not wanting to face the bar, he put his focus on his peripheral.
From across the street, Abby watched Johnny tending bar, another transplant from the UK Meg. Dre would be in soon. Abby’s was busy, but then, the bar was always busy. A regular crowd cycled through of expats, planar wanderers, MidHi tourists, and Low locals, all in search of respite or hiding from something. That’d always been the purpose of the bar. In the eighty years he’d owned the café and in the three hundred years before, it’d been an international stop with local dive flair. That’s how he’d found the bar a century before. He’d meandered in and found solace. A short glance each time he passed pacified him.
The sideways glance almost caused him a fall when one of the sidewalk sleepers—in a plea for credits—flung out an open hand. Abby’s footfall nearly landed on the man’s forearm, and would’ve, had he not caught himself.
“Ugh,” Leta said, stepping away from the curb. “These poor people.”
“You get used to it.”
“I’d rather not,” she said.
Abby cleared his throat and gestured across the street. “I’m over there.”
Over the years, the walk home had become routine. Steal his way past the bar, always from the far side of the street, and when he was clear of the tavern window, cross to his doorway. This older part of the Meg held one of the island’s few historic districts, populated with old buildings like his bar. While the other great ziggurat towers encompassed square miles, the towers above the historic districts were held high by strategically rooted mammoth pillars. There was a practical reason for this. In order to prevent uneven settling, the great towers of the Meg had to be built on bedrock. There were only a few points in the historic districts where the bedrock was shallow, so the buildings were preserved by chance. There was a short time when his small residential building and his bar, were worth a great deal. When the population controls for the island were put into place, there were those who thought the street level could be cleaned up, become a shopping mall of sorts. Attempts were made, but full revitalization never came to fruition. Abby was fine with that. He trusted old things. Not so much in a way that he felt he could depend on them. Rather, he accepted them at face value. The black lacquered wood in his bar and the patina-stained crystal that hung from the lights. The ornate cement moldings that lined the doorways dating from the twenty-second, twenty-first, and twentieth century. Brickwork, mortar; these things he preferred to the refined sterility of the prefab lifestyle up above.